Laugh Out Loud Friday

Below is an old Silicon Valley Mom's blog post, with some funny downloads, urge you to GET THEM NOW.  Who has time to go to audible these days and actually do a search, though, so thankfully I've found a number of funny - and free - podcasts, plus a few others.  It seems comedians are doing their own podcasts to promote themselves and their friends, and to talk about things they love.  What's not to love about these self-proclaimed "nerds?" - nothing, that's what.  I've found several of these through the first one, when he's had them on his show, so thanks Doug Benson...as someone recently said to me, "he always looks like he's high" to which I responded, "he probably is."  He created the documentary "Super High Me"  - still need to get that.

My top 10 (or so) podcasts (all can be found in iTunes)

1. Doug Loves Movies - I wish there were more of these, but he's getting his own TV show
2. The Pod F Tomcast (Paul F Tomkins is a riot, the first hurt my tummy muscles and made me want to start using Google Voice)
3. Stop Podcasting Yourself (subscribed for the name, Canadian, so sweet & funny - and nice of course)
4. The Nerdist (awesome, just awesome, if sometimes a bit long)
5. This American Life and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me - of course
6. The Moth Podcast - hilariously funny, heart wrenching, tear jerking, unbelievable stories
7. SuperEgo - completely and totally crazy, if I remember correctly (seems it's turned to video)
8. WNYC's Radiolab - just very cool, and family-friendly
9. Freakonomics - economics explains everything
10. Sklarbro Country - okay, have not yet heard this, but sounds great.  They have Doug Benson on this week and heard them on the Nerdist.

And just to round out this post, I've Jerseylicioued myself, thanks to Cat (aka @dearbadkitty at Wishbone Clover) and Kristy (She Just Walks Around With It - speaking of funny, also of Promtacular fame)
Shudder.

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Originally posted at SV Moms Blog
I remember back in high school having these laughing fits with my friends until my stomach was aching.  In particular I had this one friend who was just really funny, and another on the more serious side but for some reason just really cracked me up.  She'd say some random thing, I'd go into fits of hysteria and she's just look at me like I was nuts, going "What?  What?"  This of course happened at innapproriate times like Passover dinner or in a mall restaurant while I was trying to order.

Laughing is great for you - burns calories, puts you in a cheery mood, but I find spontanious bales of this level of laugher much rarer these days.  Sure my kids do funny things, but sometimes those are the times you can't really burst out laughing so much as chuckle slightly as they seriously expalin the intracacies of the power ranger clan or why you should NOT call them "sweetie pie".   Therefore I've attempted to artificially induce these in the car using my trusty iPod. 

My top 5 funniest downloads.

1. The Ricky Gervais Show- Season 1.  Ricky's from The Office (BBC version) and Extras and this show is to die for.  By the last few episodes I think driving was probaby quite dangerous.  The other seasons are hilarious I'm sure but this one was free (I don't think it's free anymore, but he does have three free specials).  I've been too cheap to purchase the rest until I've exhausted other free downloads.  It was the number one downloaded podcast with like 8 million downloads and I won't say anything more beyond "I could eat a knob at night" - the dance remix.
2. Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! - NPR.  This is on every Saturday, but who can schedule these things with little kids running around?  Subscribe free on iTunes.
3. Steven Colbert's interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air- need I say more?  I just noticed you can get John Stewart, David Sedaris, Dave Chappelle... - those have all got to be funny.
4. Un-caberet Stand-up and Stories.  I first heard one of these from Julia Sweeney on This American Life.  These are funny, sometimes sad stories told at a club by comedians - the idea (but don't quote me) is the stories must be true and told for the first time at this club.  Standup is from the stage, stories are, well, stories.  Free preview shows from audible.com.
5. And speaking of This American Life - this is now a free podcast, archives cost.  Some of the funniest episodes are:

• Anything by David Sedaris...audible's list (also at iTunes of course)
• Fiasco - Peter Pan production
• Recodings for Someone - the best phone message ever

Bonus Track - Car Talk, also on NPR, 10am every weekend. I personally have not downloaded this, but own a CD and listen as often as I can.  These guys also sponsored Lightening McQeen, so they've got to be cool.

I found some of these using the cool "I want to...Laugh out Loud...For less than 3 hours" feature on audible.com, thus the tile.

What's an old hag, mommy?

That's the latest in a long line of questions my son needs to have answered no less than 32 times a day. He has fun asking the same question over and over until I figure out his little game. I'm not sure where he heard the term "old hag" - probably in a fairy tell grandpa read to him. It's not an easy term to define, but I did my best to ensure he never referred to either grandma as an old hag. Unfortunately, my husband has managed to attract numerous old hags, or more accurately bitter old women. I think he doesn't put enough good karma out into the atmosphere, spending his time coaching young boys rather than helping old women across the road.

The first was a lady in our neighborhood, one of three who seem to spend most of their days looking out for wrongdoings so they can call the police. They've done it three times to the man across the street (who spends his free time delivering food to the homeless) when his 16lb 16 year old dog stepped on her lawn. She's also yelled at me when mine stepped on her lawn, and once when he lifted his leg on her pot (I don't go near there anymore on my dog walks). Now, I do not make it a habit of wandering up people's driveways so my pups can pee on their flower pots. But she keeps hers at the end of her driveway, actually she keeps 5 scattered strategically around her driveway, so she has to move them each time she needs to move her car. Why, you might wonder? Six years ago another neighbor used her driveway to turn around, left a small black tire mark, and she never, ever wants that evilness to occur on her precious driveway again.

Mean old lady number two was found wandering around a park. Brian was running a soccer camp and he did allow the kids to occasionally pee by a tree. It's debatable whether this is appropriate behaviour, but I'm sure anyone with little boys knows it happens. So there my little 6YO was peeing away when a woman walks by with her dog and screams at him, "you can't pee there, go to the bathrooms," making him cry. My husband lost his cool a bit and yelled back at her, at which point she called the cops. The cop explained that indeed we should be using the bathroom, but he was fortunately very nice and understanding. She stood up on her high horse and said she'd been a teacher for 22 years in this community. I feel sorry for her students.

The third story is truly awesome. This morning my husband was at a soccer tournament and called me with "the funniest story ever." He was coaching the game on a field which had very little room around it. So little that when he tried to warm his team up some volunteer decided his kids were too close to the field and actually pushed one of them away. She was lucky it was his soccer player and not his actual progeny as he merely gave her a verbal warning not to touch his players. When the actual game started, in order to leave enough room for the sideline refs, he had his players put their bags a few feet away, encroaching on a 12 foot wide path surrounding the field. There was now a mere 11 feet should someone want to take a stroll along the path. Of course the nemesis arrives in the form of an 80 year old woman, who yells at my husband that he can't put his team's bags on the path. He tells her there's plenty of room and goes back to coaching. His team was down 4-0 so it was not exactly a good day so far. Alas that is not good enough, so she barks "this is my field" and proceeds to walk across the field, with the game in progress. When the referee tells her she has to get off the field she sits down, staging a spontaneous protest of one old woman. I so wish I'd have been there. The other coach threw out a veiled threat about her coming down to San Jose, the ref called the game, and Brian called me to make sure I blogged about this.

How to really feel the pain at the gym

I started my daily workouts yesterday, a mere 1 1/2 weeks after I added "workout" to my calender for every weekday at 11:45pm. Fortunately it's a slow week since the timing was more like 12:30 or 1, but at least I started going. So if you too want to get a workout going and really feel the pain, here's what you can do.

Step one - 20 minutes on the step machine followed by 100 crunches in various positions. My legs felt fine, stomach was quite sore this morning.

Step two - read Fussy's blog (you should really be doing that anyway), subscribe to a funny sounding podcast she listens too (I think it was her, and if so, it's got to be funny) and finally get around to downloading it to your iPhone.

Step three - on day two as you begin "running" on the elliptical start listening to the very first podcast, even though these things (things being free podcasts by loser sounding guys) usually take time to get really funny. Suddenly find yourself doubled over with laughter and severe cramps and muscle pains of your overworked and underutilized tummy as you listen to three guys talk about walking around all day at work with a loofah the size of a softball in your back pocket. Fortunately I was the only one there, or I might have been embarrassed.

I continued laughing, but not quite to the point of incapacitation, although definitely out loud as I did my sit ups. Hope the other woman didn't think I was laughing at her.